Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
MSRP $70.00
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 might just be the series’ worst installment yet.”
Pros
Gunplay continues to be top-notch
Stellar visuals
Cutthroat is a spotlight
Cons
Short, unrewarding marketing campaign
Terrible UI
Inconsistent time-to-kill
Audio woes
Having exhausted primarily each potential setting, the Call of Duty franchise has been in its reboot part over the previous few years with a brand new tackle the Modern Warfare trilogy. Despite these recent takes by no means reaching the identical heights because the video games they’re reviving, they’ve been enjoyable sufficient to warrant appreciation by each new and returning followers.
That all ends with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
With meandering open-ended missions in its unremarkable marketing campaign and nothing of worth to say in a startlingly well timed story about terrorism, Modern Warfare 3’s marketing campaign fails to seize the identical electrifying vitality of the unique trilogy’s ultimate chapter. Though multiplayer nonetheless affords best-in-the-business gunplay, the sequel’s cluttered storefront-first UI structure, lack of authentic maps, and exhausting design frustrations dramatically carry down the multiplayer expertise.
Modern Warfare 3 isn’t only a misstep for Call of Duty — it might be the worst recreation within the historical past of the franchise.
No fashion, no substance
Modern Warfare 3‘s campaign picks up after last year’s Modern Warfare 2 and sees Task Force 141 return to the fray as soon as once more, this time in opposition to arguably probably the most memorable villain within the collection’ historical past: the ruthless Russian terrorist Vladimir Makarov. This villain served because the overarching antagonist of the unique Modern Warfare 3 (2009) and have become recognized for his heinous acts, corresponding to orchestrating the second recreation’s “No Russian” mission. His presence right here ought to have been an thrilling flip for the rebooted trilogy, but nothing in regards to the recreation’s story or characters actually works within the flat four-hour marketing campaign.
Players emotionally connect with characters, not conflicts, so we have to care in regards to the folks in our tales earlier than we are able to actually give a rattling in regards to the world they’re making an attempt to save lots of. The actors portraying Task Force 141 and their enemies are clearly gifted people who do the very best with what they’re given, however their performances are stifled by a script that lacks even a modicum of gravity. I’d be hard-pressed to match various characters’ names with their faces in Modern Warfare 3, not to mention recall a lot of something private about them. They exist solely to spew some navy jargon or remind us that “Makarov bad” in brief pre-mission cutscenes that hardly ever decelerate lengthy sufficient to provide us even a momentary glimpse into who they’re past “the good guys.”
Activision
A recreation doesn’t have to have an emotionally wealthy story or deep, fascinating characters to be good. If that had been the case, Mario’s exceedingly easy objective of saving the princess for 4 a long time wouldn’t nonetheless be touchdown his titles on Game of the Year lists, in any case. However, that’s a colourful platformer a few plumber who can flip into an elephant, whereas it is a recreation about an efficient terrorist who inflicts a speedy and devastating quantity of human struggling, but it has nothing notable to say by any means about that in a very tense time period on this planet when it’s maybe most vital to take action.
Granted, for a lot of gamers who don’t actually care about narrative, all of this can finally be secondary to the meat and potatoes of a Call of Duty marketing campaign: tight, responsive gunplay and thrilling set items. While Modern Warfare 3 is a bit mild on the latter in comparison with some earlier entries, it’s no shock that it continues to nail the superb gameplay we’ve all come to anticipate over the previous few a long time. Shooting feels as nice as ever, and the number of weapons and devices are all loads of enjoyable to make use of. The in-game lighting, environmental textures, and character fashions are significantly beautiful, with cutscenes reaching an uncanny valley impact that’s really staggering to behold. I solely want the sport’s excessive manufacturing values translated to one thing extra pleasant to really play.
It’s all simply low-cost bubble gum with taste that dissipates earlier than you’ve actually had time to chew on it …
Unfortunately, this 12 months’s new Open Combat Missions make up almost half of the marketing campaign’s ranges, flirting with a Warzone-esque single-player sandbox. These outings drop you right into a map and offer you free rein over how one can full preset goals. One of those requested me to work my manner up every degree of a tall, decrepit constructing — usually sending me out to scale its partitions on scaffolding and makeshift bridges — and might be probably the most rousing mission of all the marketing campaign. I cleared rooms and hallways at a breakneck tempo earlier than my relentless advance culminated in an epic shootout on the roof that left me longing for extra persistently stimulating content material of that caliber. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get any.
Instead, this departure from strictly linear missions is extra of a gimmick than a revolutionary change that usually slows the sport’s tempo to a crawl as you wander round scavenging for objects. It finally steals away the sense of urgency and stress the franchise is understood for. The duties are generic, corresponding to discovering intel, disarming bombs, or blowing up some helicopters — and whether or not you strategy issues stealthily or guns-a-blazing has no significant end result. The quite a few stashes scattered across the map not less than add a little bit of incentive for devoted completionists to replay the missions, however I believe that the majority different gamers will lack any motivation to take action. I’m involved these missions function a glance into what an open-world Call of Duty may seem like sooner or later, and if that is what we should always anticipate, I’m not so certain it’ll stick the touchdown.
Activision
Modern Warfare 3 is at its greatest when it locations you in conventional missions that funnel you to and from scripted segments, corresponding to its opening jail break sequence. While none of those attain any notable highs for the collection, a handful of them not less than present momentary thrills. Then there are the a number of missions that drive you to witness the slaughter of civilians (or in a single case, be an unwilling participant) in an try to promote us a brand new “No Russian.” These sequences are positively uncomfortable within the second, however they ring out as hole shock and awe to be forgotten between shootouts. It’s all simply low-cost bubble gum with taste that dissipates earlier than you’ve actually had time to chew on it, and also you’re prone to have lengthy forgotten it by the point it’s on the underside of another person’s shoe.
What’s outdated is newish once more
Call of Duty has persistently nailed the basics of run-and-gun capturing for 20 years now, mixing glorious recreation really feel and pacing with memorable maps, weapons, and perks that preserve issues feeling recent, even when solely on the floor. Most of this continues in Modern Warfare 3. Movement is quick and fluid, the gunplay produces among the greatest suggestions the collection has ever provided, and each new and returning modes grant compelling causes to dive in. That’s very true of the brand-new Cutthroat mode, which offers heart-pounding 3v3v3 elimination showdowns the place technique is paramount and each shot issues. But regardless of its acquainted ups, Modern Warfare 3 additionally highlights the franchise’s more and more irritating downs.
We’ve all discovered to not anticipate something massively completely different 12 months over 12 months, nevertheless it’s nonetheless stunning that Modern Warfare 3 is the primary Call of Duty to launch with none authentic 6v6 maps. Instead, it chooses to mine nostalgia from its gamers with recreated maps from the unique Modern Warfare 2 (2009). While completely repurposing outdated maps for a brand new recreation appears a bit of lazy, I can’t deny that all of them seems completely beautiful in all of their modernized glory, and I loved seeing the methods by which they’d been retooled for a brand new technology.
Most adjustments to those locales are minor (there at the moment are doorways that may be opened, and beforehand uninhabitable water is now swimmable), making it thrilling to work together with an outdated favourite location. But as I identified in my Modern Warfare 2 evaluate final 12 months, Call of Duty maps have change into progressively full of pointless quantities of litter and an abundance of entryways into each space. The remodeling of those basic maps ensures that pattern is upheld.
Franchise veterans who grew up taking part in these maps could also be thrown off once they discover that sure obstacles or places have been modified fairly a bit, and a few all-new sightlines change how firefights play out in go-to spots. Unless you’re a spawn-studying professional with the reflexes of a cat, likelihood is that you just’ll ceaselessly be overwhelmed by enemies firing at you from a number of angles at anyone time — particularly as Call of Duty pushes vertical dominance greater than ever.
Infinity Ward
This casualization of the franchise signifies that almost everybody will get an opportunity to get not less than a kill or two no matter their talent, nevertheless it additionally signifies that the ceiling for aggressive play is far greater. It calls for an much more intense degree of dedication and map consciousness than ever to beat this design selection and keep away from low-cost deaths. Alas, I’m not superhuman and may solely see in entrance of me, so I proceed to yearn for the times when shootouts relied virtually completely on my velocity and purpose reasonably than my skill to watch a dozen sightlines without delay. Your mileage might differ.
In did take pleasure in spurts of enjoyable on-line with Modern Warfare 3 once I was in a position to settle right into a groove and simply benefit from the gunplay. As with most multiplayer gaming, it’s significantly extra entertaining with mates who can strategize and chortle in equal measure alongside you. Still, there’s solely a lot nonsense I can tolerate earlier than my degree of irritation overtakes the thrill of camaraderie. For each irksome quirk, there’s one thing else that compounds it to push me past my limits.
Just rebrand the collection as what it truly is at its core now: a storefront with a multiplayer mode connected.
It’s one factor that the disastrous UI makes each side of navigating menus as unintuitive as doable. But then I’ve additionally bought to cope with a $70 recreation aggressively steering me towards microtransactions with countless advertisements and prompts, successfully treating me like a person as an alternative of a participant. I can shrug off how the entire weapons sound fairly related general. But then I’ve to just accept that the sounds of distant teammate’s footsteps are in some way louder than these of enemies proper on prime of me. I can abdomen unhealthy spawn factors as a result of, hey, Activision would possibly as effectively simply market spawn tenting as a function contemplating that it’s nonetheless such a prevalent difficulty after 20 mainline video games. But then I nonetheless must endure blood-boiling time-to-kill inconsistencies that depart me feeling baffled.
Coupling all of those aggravating parts with a single-player mode that feels cobbled collectively by Dr. Frankenstein, Modern Warfare 3 is probably the most substantial step again for a franchise that has been inching ahead for almost a decade. The quick and forgettable story isn’t remotely absorbing, and its multiplayer has no id in an ever-expanding sea of extra distinctive shooters. But hey, not less than you possibly can spend $20 for a celeb pores and skin. So perhaps it’s time for the corporate to nix the campaigns altogether and simply rebrand the collection as what it truly is at its core now: a storefront with a multiplayer mode connected.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was reviewed on PS5.
Editors’ Recommendations